Sin. Sharon Page

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СКАЧАТЬ The word flowed off his tongue in a nonchalant manner, as though they had met in the park and he had just touched his hat and commented on the rain. But it struck her with the force of a lusty slap on her backside. She thought of the pictures he was looking at, pictures she’d created, and all the confidence she’d struggled to earn evaporated in a heartbeat.

      His lordship rested his elbow on the mantel and smiled at her confusion.

      No. She had finally succeeded in taking charge of her life and she wasn’t about to surrender her control. Earl or no. She must bluff him. And, for the sakes of her mother and sisters, she must prove better at bluffing than her father.

      She stiffened her spine. Prim disgust. That’s what she sought. She imagined Lady Plim, the wife of Sir Plim, and the sharp-tongued tartar of Maidenswode. “My lord, it may be the fashion amongst the aristocracy to carry scandalous tomes about and view them before unsuspecting women, but I am afraid your behavior is—”

      He waved an elegant hand. “Don’t waste my time, Miss Hamilton. You’ve got paint on your sleeve.”

      “Watercolors. A lady’s pastime.”

      He chuckled and a shiver raced down her spine. She’d never heard a laugh like that. A low, rumbling, purely masculine laugh. It held a naughty suggestive sensuality that she’d never been treated to before.

      He inclined his handsome head. “Rodesson has told me all about you, my dear. He came to me to plead for the return of his vowels—for the sake of his illegitimate daughters.”

      Venetia flinched at the word illegitimate. It never failed to make her feel her parents’ actions had been her fault.

      “But—” Her last-ditch attempt to protest that Rodesson was not her father died on her lips. His lordship knew the truth and she was not going to convince him otherwise.

      He crooked his gloved finger. “Come here, Miss Hamilton. I don’t wish to shout our conversation across the room and I suspect you wouldn’t want that either.”

      She glared, not willing to go at his command, but he was right, of course. She would bet pounds to pennies that Mrs. Cobb had her ear pressed to the keyhole. Reluctantly, Venetia marched toward the fireplace and the analogy of flinging herself from the pan to the flames leapt to mind.

      She stopped at the worn and sagging wing chair, keeping it between them. But even separated from Lord Trent by a bulky piece of furniture, she felt small, dainty, and vulnerable confronted by his size and superb build. Her throat tightened. Her heart galloped. A quiver that she hoped was fear, but suspected wasn’t, arced down her spine.

      The earl left the mantel and strolled toward her, the spine of her book cupped in his large palm. “Your father insisted he had no means of supporting his family other than the royalties for his books. He explained that his innocent eldest daughter has been forced to embark on a dangerous career painting erotica.”

      What a fool her father had been! Trent was a rake, a scoundrel. He exuded so much sin and devilment, she suspected he didn’t dare walk into a church. Everything about him screamed debaucher. He moved with a tantalizing predatory grace, his twinkling eyes threatened disaster to an innocent heart, and as for his seductive, insolent grin—

      “My father is aging!” she cried. “He was despondent, confused. He forgot he had painted pictures that were not previously published. Really, how could I have possibly created that sort of risqué work?”

      “I don’t know, my dear. But you did, since it is obvious Rodesson didn’t paint them.”

      Her heart hammered as Trent paced around the chair until he stood behind her. She refused to turn, but glanced back out of the corner of her eye. He towered over her. Trapped between his large body and the chair, she couldn’t retreat. He bent until his warm breath whispered along the rim of her ear, exposed by her severe chignon. She lurched back in shock, rewarded by the rasp of his closely shaved jaw along her cheek.

      Despite her skittering nerves, she forced herself not to move. If she turned, her lips might touch his.

      The maddening temptation to tilt her head toward his took her by surprise. She was hot, perspiring beneath her corset and tight-fitting bodice. Tense and wound up like a coiled spring.

      This man had made love to a bound woman! This rogue had lain on a sumptuous bed, suckling the breast of one woman while another took him in her mouth—

      Yes, the earl might look exactly like the sort of fantasy man she created with brush in hand—the gorgeous libertine felled by love—but it was an entirely different matter to have a real rake in possession of such devastating knowledge. And she didn’t think for one moment Trent would be felled by anything.

      He rested her book on the back of the chair. To her astonishment, he flipped it open, turning the pages until he found a plate. “Ah, The Page Turner.”

      She knew the picture by heart, of course. A young man holding a candelabrum and turning the pages while his fetching lady played. The buck’s pants were open, the lady’s breasts freed from her dress, her skirts pooling over her bared thighs. The lady pursed her pink-lipped mouth delicately toward his member. In the shadows beneath the instrument, another man—Trent as the lady’s secret lover—pleasured the lady with his fingers. A silly fantasy really—created because she had hated practicing her pianoforte.

      Now devastating, because it involved him. Even over the crackle of the fire, her quick, shallow breathing seemed to fill the room.

      “Exquisite.” The earl’s smooth rich voice wrapped around her like silk. “But while your style is very similar to your father’s, there are marked differences.”

      “Impossible,” she lied. “Since the drawings are my father’s.”

      “The lady’s hands are playing a chord that corresponds to the music sheet. I know the piece, my sister played it a thousand times—I used to be conscripted to hold her sheets. And in your father’s work, the females are vacuous, simpering, all of a type. But in this book, every woman is different. Distinct.”

      “You look at the ladies’ faces, my lord?”

      “Yes I do, Miss Hamilton,” he murmured by her ear. “Evidence of a lady’s touch, I believe.”

      She kept her attention straight ahead but his scents teased her, enveloped her. A tinge of sandalwood soap. Starch in his shirt collar and cravat, cedar in his clothes, smoke and coffee on his breath. Horse and leather and the lightest hint of his sweat. The earl must be one of those gentlemen who enjoyed a good gallop on the Row at the crack of dawn.

      Despite herself, she breathed deeply. Intrigued. Painted men did not have such alluring smells. She was cloistered in her studio all the time—she never met real gentlemen. To remember his scent would help her be more creative. More inspired.

      His lordship’s hard biceps bumped her shoulders. The sensual brush of his body against hers set her legs trembling. Venetia balled her hands into fists, stiffened her spine. “You must be a true connoisseur of my father’s work, my lord Trent.”

      How else could he have spotted her slight deviations from her father’s style? How likely was it that other gentlemen would?

      “My father was,” he said. “He owned every volume of Rodesson art. He introduced me to it at an early age. I believe СКАЧАТЬ